John Sills is managing partner at The Foundation, a customer-led growth consultancy. He started out 25 years ago on a London market stall and has since worked with leadership teams shaping strategy, innovation teams designing propositions and frontline teams delivering experiences. That's a rare combination, and it shows in how he thinks. He was head of customer innovation at HSBC and now works with organisations including Sky, BP, Heineken, Bupa and UNICEF. He's the author of The Human Experience, which won Leadership Book of the Year, writes the CX Stories newsletter, and has been featured in The Guardian, the FT and Management Today. He also makes regular visits to complete strangers' homes to ask them very personal questions in the name of research.
What we cover
Why the CEO role happened: partly accident, but underneath it a need for autonomy and authenticity. Twelve years at HSBC, several rounds of redundancies, and the growing sense of being out of control of your own future.
What authenticity actually means at work, and why organisations hire people for their perspectives and then gradually hammer those perspectives out of them.
Why authenticity makes you a better leader: the team isn't second-guessing which version of you will turn up.
The morning routine, borrowed from Maria Popova: a calm, consistent start as the bedrock of the day, and a golden period between 7 and 9 when the real thinking gets done. The book was written 7 to 8 every morning.
The myth of speed: he deliberately takes the longer train. Fifteen minutes slower, but a seat the whole way, and he arrives on top of the day. His point on HS2: comfort, connectivity and Wi-Fi make a productive journey, not just speed.
The hardest period: 2020, with a newborn arriving two months after lockdown, his mother terminally ill a hundred miles away, and 12–15 people to keep employed. Three lessons: listen to your body and know when you're about to fall over; be open with the team, because they feel your stress whether you tell them or not; and let it force you into funnel vision on the few things that matter.
Influences: "You're everyone you've ever met", including, he admits, an eighty-year-old very drunk sailor in Marseille.
The coaching lesson that stuck: know your people, know your people, know your people. Plus Ken Blanchard's situational leadership: shape your approach to them rather than making them fit you.
His five leadership values, overheard by chance at a Wokingham branch from an area manager he met for 45 minutes and never saw again: be the best you can be, do what you say you're going to do, put yourself in the other person's shoes, seek to improve yourself, and have fun.
Executive teams: open communication, no side conversations once everyone's agreed in the room, and what his colleague Charlie Dawson calls a shared sense of "burningness". A small gap at the top gets wider every month.
AI: agentic rather than chatbots, and the risk of using the time freed up to become busier fools rather than more considered leaders.
The responsibility question: Dame Irene Hayes at Hayes Travel, and an apprenticeship scheme central to the purpose of the business, not a nice-to-have.
What AI means for frontline teams: if it takes 80–90% of interactions, the 10–20% left are the most complex, emotional and stressful. Your people move from low-value contacts to the moments that define the relationship.
First Direct's hiring principle: recruit the smile and train the skill. Teaching skills is easier than ever; teaching empathy never gets easier.
Why leaders too often leave frontline teams to run the gauntlet on policies set at head office.
John's three pieces of advice, via his nan, who lived to 101
Laugh at the world. Don't take it all too seriously, or it will consume you.
Drink whiskey every day. (His nan's rule, though he admits he's taken it to heart occasionally.)
Be human. We spend a lifetime learning to be human, then walk into organisations and speak a language we'd never normally use.
Quotes
"Know your people, know your people and know your people."
"You're everyone you've ever met."
On AI freeing up capacity: "You end up becoming busier fools."
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